


between the shadow and the soul

by lightningbend



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood, Deepthroating, Dirty Talk, Edging, Gore, M/M, Oral Sex, Smut, Vampires, Violence, Werewolves, and sexy vampire times, because Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 16:26:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14674941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningbend/pseuds/lightningbend
Summary: There are no fairytales left in the citadel. Every story worth telling — even the ones about love — begins and ends with monsters. Kim Mingyu knows this, in his bones and in his blood. Life is too cruel, and too monstrous to be made beautiful in the telling. Especially when your story begins with Jeon Wonwoo.





	between the shadow and the soul

In the heart of the city’s underbelly, beyond the reach of the King’s dominion and his blind legions, there is a place where the sun never rises and the only currency traded in is blood and secrets.

They call it Purgatory. 

The gateway to the demimonde, an abyss of endless hedonism and depravity, Purgatory is where the forsaken and the soulless alike congregate en masse in pursuit of sin, in pursuit of pleasure and contraband, and whatever your wildest imaginations — or your darkest inhibitions — could summon.

Legend and whispered folklore has it that Purgatory was built on consecrated ground, hallowed ground  _blessed_ by the gods and all their angels before the burnings. The witch trials. The purges. And then the profligates and deviants raised Purgatory from its ashes, fashioned its bones out of the blood-spilt magic and sacrilege. Purgatory, they say, is where fallen saints and sinners go when blasphemy and profanity has abandoned them both. When nothing else exists for them in heaven or hell that could satisfy their hunger.

Purgatory is the lover that takes you in its arms at the end of the world, sweeps you up slow-dancing as the Last Judgement comes, murmuring sweet, tantalising nothings in your ear as it devours you whole.

There are people that step across the threshold of Purgatory and are never seen again, lost down the never-ending rabbit hole of debauchery and sin. The atmosphere, saturated with sex and recklessness, draws them to the edge of the void and sings them right over. The blood and bones of the building living and breathig and feedingoff of it.

The citadel’s black market makes its highest and most lucrative profits from the underworld’s illicit trade here, amplified by the opulence and allure of the fairy folk’s designer drugs and crushed crystalline. All manner of deviants and pleasure demons have turned it into a hunting ground, no fetish or aberration too wild or too far gone for the blood lust saturating every corner and every shadow. The line between dead and alive is so finely tread by dark magic built into Purgatory’s walls that some say the oldest patrons of Purgatory aren’t truly living _or_ dead, but kept young and beautiful and undead by the pulsing life force of the crowds that spill in through its doors and never leave.

Everything that happens within Purgatory’s walls — the sex, the drugs, the revelry — keeps the secrecy of it alive. For those don’t want to be found, and aren’t particularly concerned if that means being lost forever, Purgatory offers a last hope of salvation. Or damnation.

It’s the perfect place for someone who barely counts as alive, and isn’t afraid of dying.

Kim Mingyu is alive only out of sheer luck, determination, and casual slaughter. He has the blood of the King’s Sentinels still crusted in the leather of his boots, and a city-wide manhunt gunning for the target on his back.

One billion won for the person who finds him, dead or alive.

In the citadel, like the rest of the kingdom, being found with wolf blood in your veins is a crime punishable by execution. The only reason Mingyu isn’t dead is that he’s spilled enough blood to have earned higher judgement. Perhaps if he were any other ordinary street-level outlaw, they’d hang him for murder, manslaughter, or conspiracy, instead of for the crime of simply daring to exist. As it stands, if they catch him again, alive, _terribly, unforgivably alive_ , Mingyu might as well be dead.

So Mingyu made the only choice that he could to live – freedom; _escape_ at the gamble of dying another day. In his great escape, he slaughtered over a dozen of the Royal Guard with his bare hands, his wrists still ringed with the fresh welts of chains forged from the purest silver. The scars littering his skin have scarred over into the soft pink of new flesh. The vaguely dishevelled look of a man who’s just recently been through hell and back clashes with the glittering sheen of his transparent, low-cut shirt and the tight fit of his pants. Every movement makes him gleam, the fabric deceptively black until it shimmers iridescent under the light.

He owes Minghao a life debt – _several_ life debts, which is helpful given the typical lifespan of a witch, especially one as powerful as Minghao. This time around, it’s not only for the disguise but for the medallion dangling on a chain around his neck. It’s safely nondescript, unlikely to be recognised or stolen, a simple metal chain lightly worked through with low amounts of silver. The pendant itself is carved with a single character.

(Mingyu had laughed, teased the witch for marking him so blatantly with his personal seal. Minghao had shot him an uncharacteristically grave look, murmured something under his breath about _gods-cursed prophecies_ and _lunar retrograde_. 

When Minghao had given it to him, he had pressed the medallion so tightly into his palm he’d almost drawn blood. 

“Do not take this off, under _any circumstances_. Unless someone physically removes your head from your body, _this medallion means your life_.” 

Mingyu didn’t have any more jokes after that.)

Mingyu still isn’t entirely clear on what the medallion is intended to do, or the full extent of the magic Minghao has spelled it with. What he knows is this: his scent is completely gone. No trace of wolf blood to be detected. They’d tested it, scattering drops of Mingyu’s blood in the streets around one of Minghao’s safe houses in the lower city. Even Minghao’s strongest uncloaking spells hadn’t been able to determine the origin of the bloodstains seeping into the dirt.

The medallion’s magic camouflages him in a sea of strangers, both human and not. He knows he registers as distinctly _not_ , even amidst the crowds of fae and shapeshifters and nightwalkers. Purgatory’s entry stamp is still stinging on his wrist, the raised skin of the seal a softly glowing red. An identity spell strong enough to set off an instant alarm if the holder matches a face or a name on the Legions’ most wanted list. 

Despite existing just outside the reach of the crown, and holding enough political clout and power to turn their nose against citadel laws and regulations, Purgatory’s proprietors aren’t above collecting sizeable bounties on wanted criminals.

The seal on his wrist is proof that Minghao’s medallion works, and Mingyu intends for it to _continue working_ as long as his head is firmly attached to the rest of him.

Safe passage granted beyond Purgatory’s entrance means he’s one step closer to getting answers, one step closer to finding out _who the fuck he is_ and why, for the last twenty-two years of his life he’s been locked like an animal in a cage in the underground dungeons of the royal castle when the rest of his species had been hunted to extinction decades ago.

He can feel the eyes on him as he moves through the crowd, explicitly careful not to brush against anyone even incidentally.

Mingyu’s used to being an object of scrutiny. Before puberty hit, and hit _hard_ , he’d been the scholars and scientists’ little well-kept pet, studied with a clinical curiosity, but more of a fascination than a specimen. With every successive growth spurt, the attention turned from his boyish cuteness to his developing height and musculature from both the testing and the in-born nature of his species.

Mingyu is used to being _watched_ like some sort of prey, used to being lusted after with varying degrees of subtlety. On the surface, there’s no augmentation or cosmetic enhancement to suggest he’s anything but human. But he knows half of the room, the people with their eyes on him, watching him from the shadowed corners and within the moving, gyrating mass of bodies on the dancefloor, are dying to find out the truth for themselves.

Inside Purgatory, the atmosphere is an overwhelming chaos of scents and noise. If it weren’t for the last decade or so of having his instincts honed and driven to their very extremities, Mingyu wouldn’t be able to draw breath without choking. Every new scent is distraction, _temptation_ – the undercurrents of drugs, most of which Mingyu’s never tasted other than through an IV, and sex, and other dark curiosities swirling together in a confusion of hedonism and over-indulgence.

He reminds himself he’s here for a _reason_. This is no time to fall victim to Purgatory’s many, proliferate diversions.

Mingyu heads for the bar, asks for another of the drink some magenta-haired light fae has just ordered, her fingers brushing against his shoulder teasingly as she shoots him a wink before vanishing into the crowd. When the bartender slides it over on the countertop, the liquid is sparkling softly, fizzing with bubbles and bursts of pure glitter. It changes colour from one second to the next, the liquid a shifting miasma of aquamarine, then rose quartz, indigo blue, and pyrite. He downs it like a shot, the drink cool and summer-bright on his tongue despite its appearance. An immediate flush of euphoria rises like a sun in his chest, spreading through the rest of his body.

For a moment, he lets himself enjoy the taste of bliss and easy, delirious joy. He closes his eyes, the sound of the music thumping in the background, the hard, heavy bass line keeping time with his pulse as the seductive siren song weaves around each beat. 

It’s just a drink – the intended effect of a fae cocktail – nothing more. But liquid courage, and his own bravery bordering on a death wish, is all he’s got.

He sets the glass back down on the counter of the bar, thanking the cute bartender with a wink. The bartender rolls his eyes, flickers of gold beneath thick violet lashes, but returns his smile, his skin shifting from a deep ultramarine to a light cerulean.

With the liquor’s sweetness loosening his apprehension, he heads out onto the dancefloor. Here, in the heart of the city’s underground, he could be just another lost soul chasing after tonight’s pleasure and nothing else. He’s quickly realising that lingering on the side-lines as a mere bystander isn’t going to cut it here, if he wants his answers, he’s going to have to hunt them down himself. And he can’t do that if he rouses suspicions about who he is and why no one here has ever anyone seen him before. 

Besides, the blinding, suffocating pandemonium of scents and traces of magic, and sex, and drugs, is as _real_ as any stimulant, and Mingyu finds the smile that curves on his lips comes without a second thought when a stranger gestures for him to come closer.

Their flame-red hair seems to waver and flicker like real fire, the piercings lining their ears glinting under the lights. The jacket they’re wearing unbuttoned reveals a bare chest, and their pants leave absolutely nothing to the imagination.

A slit brow angles in invitation as Mingyu gives them an appreciative once-over. He’s about to move, to smile that smile that shows the tips of his canines, the one that’s both boyish and irresistibly charming, when a voice speaks up at his shoulder.

“All things considered, not a bad choice. But you don’t strike me as someone who gravitates towards the first, easy thing they see.”

They’re so close to Mingyu, or at least their voice – low and smooth and reverberating right in Mingyu’s ear – that Mingyu almost jumps he’s so thrown by being caught off-guard.

“What?” He stutters out before he can catch himself, whirling to eye the owner of that gods-forsaken voice. 

The voice, he discovers, fittingly belongs to a man who looks like sin and seduction dressed in silk. From head to toe, Mingyu drinks him in detail by detail: black hair slicked effortlessly back from his forehead; dark eyes sharply tapered, lined in smoke and ink; the elegant line of his noise; his perfectly shaped lips; the jawline carved from white marble; the leather choker and intricate tangle of silver chains dripping from it; his lean frame in that blazer embroidered in silver and black damask, and the outline of his shirt beneath it dipping below the arches of alabaster collarbones.

The man is the most beautiful thing Mingyu’s ever seen. Granted, Mingyu hasn’t _seen_ very many people in his life, but he knows this one is as close to perfection as any entity in heaven or hell could dream up.

“In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before.”

 _That_ snaps Mingyu out of his reverie. His mouth quirks, the smile he’d been saving for someone else curving on his lips, warm and mischievous.

“No, you’d definitely remember if you had.” 

The stranger seems to take that as a good thing, a smile hinting in the twitch of his mouth. He advances closer, eyes fixed on Mingyu in a way he finds he can’t look away from.

“So, what brings you to Purgatory then? Business, or _pleasure_?” He draws the latter word out on his tongue, lightly, but low with insinuation. If Mingyu was a lesser man, it’d make him want to suppress a shiver. 

“Neither.” Mingyu answers, withholding on a pause that’s deliberately meant to incite curiosity. “I’m… looking for someone.” Of course, the _who_ is yet to be determined. 

“Oh?” The man arches a sleek brow. “What’s their name? Maybe I could help.” 

Mingyu presses his lips together, the edge of a canine sinking slightly into his bottom lip. “It’s, uh, it’s alright. This is probably something I’m better off handling alone. I appreciate the gesture though.”

“Well, I wish you all the luck on your quest to find them then,” the man murmurs. His eyes, already black as the sky during an eclipse, seem to darken. “If you’re here for a reason though, perhaps there’s an explanation as to why you found _me_.”

A grin unfurls on Mingyu’s face at that, eyes glinting with mischief. “I found _you_ , did I? Is that what you call all but stealing me from someone else?”

The man widens his eyes, flirtation seamlessly vanishing into the deception of innocence. “I was simply pointing out the obvious. You’re _not_ a man who does things the easy way, are you?”

“Well, I guess this conversation is all the proof you need.” Mingyu chuckles, entertained in spite of the man’s shameless attempt at deflection. 

Another step, another flicker of a smile at the edges of curved lips, and the stranger is close enough to scent, to taste. “And I certainly don’t see a man who looks like _you_ being anyone’s prey.”

For all his talk, Mingyu can’t help but feel like he’s being offered an invitation to be swallowed alive and whole, led wilfully like a lamb to the slaughter. Blind, and wanting.

Still, he needs the appearance of being at home in this exchange to solidify his disguise, to _blend in_. If flirting with handsome strangers, and being voluntarily seduced by a man who looks like he was fashioned in the image of the seraphim before they abandoned heaven for hell, helps him remain unseen, then so be it. And Mingyu’s never had anyone see him, even superficially, as anything other than someone else’s prey. Hunting is in his blood, the urge to _hunt_ is in his bones, somewhere primal and animal where the instinct to kill or to die lives in him.

It’s been so long since he last knew what the freedom to be _something more_ tasted like.

Mingyu takes a step forward, breaching the stranger’s space as he draws himself close enough to breathe him in, to kiss him. He dips, closing the brief distance between them, lips brushing against the man’s ear. 

“Dance with me.” He says, a command spoken like he already knows the answer. The stranger is smiling as he pulls back, sharp eyes alight with satisfaction. As if this is all according to plan. And as he laces their hands together and pulls him towards the dancefloor, Mingyu feels a something in him hum with pleasure.

The man’s lean frame fits against Mingyu’s in all the right places, a column of heat blazing against his skin everywhere where they touch. Mingyu curves a palm across one of the man’s hips, a possessiveness to the act that pleases the instinct in him to take, to claim, to _mark_. The movement of his body is effortless, _sinuous_ , fluid as water and meant for casual appreciation. Mingyu takes great pleasure in sliding his thigh between the man’s legs and pressing their hips together in case of any lingering glances.

He’s itching to get his mouth on the man’s neck, beneath the silverwork dangling from it like a neon sign, but he settles for sucking at the aperture of his throat, canines nipping lightly at the fine, fair skin there. 

The man pauses in his movements, he doesn’t stop dancing entirely but it’s enough for Mingyu to catch it. And then he tips his head back and lets out a low rumble of breathy laughter. Mingyu tugs away to watch, transfixed, and through the deliriousness of hunger and lust clouding his head, his first clear thought since they began is how much he wants to hear that sound again.

Before he can attempt to illicit another laugh from him – he’s working on the _how_ – the man sinks his silk-clad fingers into Mingyu’s hair near the back of his neck, and tugs him in for a bruising, breathless kiss. It’s rough, _harsh_ , the man’s hot, wet tongue thrusting into Mingyu’s mouth like an intimation of what’s to come. The man kisses like he’s never heard of the concept of air, just an endless hunger and the relentless need to satisfy it.

When Mingyu tugs away for air, because even if the man doesn’t need to breathe, _he does_ , he can feel his heartbeat in his throat as he draws in an unsteady inhale and lets out an equally shaky breath. The man doesn’t seem to be affected at all, which Mingyu puts down to him being… _whatever he is_. A demon, probably, judging by the way he kisses like he means to fuck, and _fuck into senselessness_.

The stranger gives him another few seconds, out of compassion, and then he’s pressing another kiss to his mouth, tongue brushing into Mingyu’s lips, softer this time, gentler but no less dangerous. He kisses, bites, tongues at Mingyu’s lip, licking into his mouth and sucking hard on his tongue, leaving him a wrecked, flushed mess when he draws back enough to let Mingyu breathe.

“We should take this somewhere without prying eyes. Unless you’re into that, in which case you’re dirtier than I thought.” The man murmurs against Mingyu’s mouth. Mingyu jerks his head in a nod, not trusting his voice, or the state of his kiss-bitten mouth.

The man laces his slender fingers through Mingyu’s, tugging him deeper into the crowd, cutting right through the moving, swaying bodies and out into an area Mingyu hadn’t even noticed existed. His mind is a hazy blur of desire, and lack of oxygen, and blood, given that most of it has rushed southward.

He feels the grip on his hand pull him sharply left, and then they’re stepping out through a swirling thoroughfare cloaked in black smoke and into the open air outside. A secret entrance, or exit, to Purgatory that leads to a deserted street, utterly empty save for them. Mingyu doesn’t even have a second to register his surroundings, or to guess where in the citadel this part of Purgatory lies, because the man is on him in an instant, shoving him back with unexpected force until his back hits the wall beside Purgatory’s now sealed exit.

He’s looking at Mingyu like he wants to devour him whole, and regardless of what he said inside, like Mingyu’s the prey and _he’s_ the predator.

A shudder ripples down Mingyu’s spine, heat kindling at the base of his throat, threatening to ignite in the hitch of his shallow breath. 

“What’s your name, stranger?” Languorous and low, the velvet purr of his voice reverberating against Mingyu’s skin, lips grazing against the curve of his ear. He tries not to stiffen, not to betray the battle waging in his head between control, and the chaos of desire, pheromones and want lingering in the air of the alleyway, an entire history of debauchery and furtive depravity. Beneath that, the vein of something stronger, an undercurrent of metal, and rust. The scent of old blood.

“Mingyu.”

It feels like an admission. A secret surrendered like a bared throat.

He feels, rather than sees the man’s lips curve, the cupid’s bow of his mouth revealing a flash of teeth in the dark.

“ _Mingyu._ ”

His name has never sounded so much like a sin, like an obscenity rendered on this silk-soft tongue. It feels new, rewritten on his lips in a language Mingyu’s never heard spoken before.  

He tries not to swallow, leveraging his height against the wave of lust and tantalising want buffeting against him, the traces of his scent and the stranger’s almost indistinguishable as he inhales.  

At the first hint of movement, the muscles in the man’s shoulders seem to tense, the fingers curled around his jaw tightening imperceptibly before smoothing, flattening and gliding higher to sink into Mingyu’s hair. His hands are encased in a pair of scarlet gloves, a deep blood-red now that Mingyu can seem them properly in the light.

“What are you?” The man breathes, his breath brushing teasingly against the curve of Mingyu’s ear. He dips, lips pressing against Mingyu’s neck to suck an open-mouthed kiss along his throat. The tip of his tongue raking across his skin sears a line of liquid warmth from his mouth right down to Mingyu’s cock.

“You smell like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.”

Mingyu shudders underneath his touch, hands tightening around Wonwoo’s hips, forcing himself to still, to breathe. He can’t afford slips of control, regardless of how intent the stranger seems to be on taking apart his sanity piece by piece. 

“It’d make it too _easy_ if I just told you, wouldn’t it?” 

He chuckles, and Mingyu can feel his laughter humming in his blood, low and lust-drunk. 

“Tell me this then, Mingyu,” he murmurs, and the hazy awareness that the pad of his thumb is poised right over Mingyu’s pulse surfaces from the miasma of drunken impulse and reckless inhibition seeping into his skin. “Have you ever fucked a stranger in an alleyway before?”

He seems to take Mingyu’s silence, strained and inadvertent as it is, as agreement, eyes darkening to a shade blacker than midnight. 

“Or maybe you’re the one that likes to _be_ fucked. Have you ever been taken apart so thoroughly that you couldn’t remember your own name? Or been so utterly wrecked that you couldn’t do anything but beg for more?” 

Mingyu chokes, or rather breaks, gripping the man’s carved, and devastatingly sharp jaw with both hands to crush their mouths together. Anything to stop him from speaking another word and feeding the hunger burning low in his gut. The press of the man’s thigh between his legs causes Mingyu to stiffen, his hands, anchored at the man’s shoulders now, tensing instinctively. 

“Do you want that, Mingyu?”

A hand slips beneath the seam of his pants, curling loosely around the aching hardness straining at the fabric of his underwear. The man’s hands are much like the rest of him — smooth and deceptively soft until his grip tightens through the silk of his gloves, circling around Mingyu at the base as he nips at Mingyu’s jaw.

“Would you like to be wrecked, _ruined_ , taken apart piece by piece until you can’t think of anything but mindless pleasure?”

Gods, the man can _talk_. Mingyu hardens helplessly beneath his touch, the blood thickening in his veins right beneath the man’s hand, his long, tapered fingers. He strokes Mingyu slowly, fingers massaging at his base and dipping lower to brush teasingly against his balls before drawing back to his tip.

“You know, I had a feeling you wouldn’t disappoint.”

He’s dripping precum, an almost embarrassing amount, but the man doesn’t seem to mind it. If anything, he delights in swiping his thumb over Mingyu’s slit, and slicking his palm in the wetness, dragging his slicked hand down Mingyu’s cock.

“So hard already, Mingyu-yah.”

Mingyu lets out a small, broken noise in the back of his throat when the man twists his hand, the pressure so sweetly maddening and cruel.

On the next steady stroke of the man’s hand around him, Mingyu lets his head fall back against the wall with a desperate groan. And he takes the opportunity he’s given, leaning in to suck an open-mouthed kiss at Mingyu’s throat. It’s all heat and the sinful brush of his tongue against Mingyu’s skin, his hand pumping Mingyu’s cock, for a moment, before a sharp, insistent pressure pierces his neck.

He feels teeth biting down, the soft give of the flesh of his throat. 

“Oh, gods.” Fuck, Mingyu thinks. He wasn’t aware he had a _thing_ for being marked until this very second.

“No gods here.” And that voice, deeper than a physical growl, spoken from the very depths of his throat. “ _Wonwoo._ ” 

He feels his heartbeat slow, spill and pool over the edge of the next second like warm blood. The twist of Wonwoo’s hand curled around him, the press of his teeth against the line of his throat sending a frisson of mindless abandon through him. 

Wonwoo lifts his hand to bite at the edge of a fingertip, the sight of his teeth sinking into the crimson silk sending white-hot heat flickering through Mingyu’s stomach and right down to his cock, before sliding it off his fingers. He does the same with his other hand and tucks them neatly into his back pocket.

“Fuck, _Wonwoo_.” Mingyu gasps the name, and discovers very quickly how perfectly designed it is to be articulated in a moan.

“Better.” Wonwoo hums, low and velveteen, as he strokes his thumb across the tip of Mingyu, delighting in watching the beads of precum leak over the sides of him. The feeling of his bare skin, cool against Mingyu’s cock, is electric.

Mingyu feels a tremor run right through his thigh, wonders distantly if Wonwoo really intends to do this until he can’t fucking stand. Wonwoo sinks delicately to his knees then, not as if he’s kneeling _for_ Mingyu, but as if he’s deigned this position more comfortable for himself. He eyes Mingyu’s cock, lips parted, tongue slipping out to run across his lips and _oh_. He meant it, didn’t he? He really is going to take Mingyu apart until he can’t even remember his own goddamn name.

“You’re so wet you’re practically dripping.” Wonwoo says lightly, as if he’s observing a statement of fact like Mingyu’s height, or brown eyes and hair. “And we’ve barely started.” 

And then he’s angling his head to press an open-mouthed kiss against the head of Mingyu’s cock, flushed and red and harder than he’s ever been in his life.

Mingyu gasps, his first instinct to buck his hips, to sink himself deeper into that wet heat, obstructed by the ironclad press of one of Wonwoo’s hands against his hipbone. He pins him there with one hand alone, and his mouth on Mingyu’s cock, closing in around him until he’s reached the base of him, his nose brushing against Mingyu’s skin.

“Fuck,” Mingyu grits out between his teeth. “You –  _fuck_.”

Wonwoo seems to agree, drawing back slightly to swirl his tongue across his tip, sucking the wetness of Mingyu’s precum onto his tongue. The sound of his mouth as he pulls away, sucking and licking at Mingyu, is downright obscene, the filthiest thing Mingyu’s ever heard and will _ever_ hear. He wraps his lips around the bright red tip of Mingyu’s cock, hollowing his cheeks as he sucks, the pressure and wetness yanking something loose from inside Mingyu. 

“ _Wonwoo._ ” Mingyu cries. Wonwoo’s face shifts, and _fuck_ , he’s smiling around Mingyu’s cock, the tip of his tongue peeking out to lick into Mingyu’s slit.

“You’re so sensitive, and sensitive everywhere.” Wonwoo says. “Has it been a while?”

It’s been — Mingyu’s never had _anyone_ blow him like this before, but he’s not about to fucking say so out loud.

Wonwoo smirks, the shape of his mouth spelling disaster for Mingyu without him even having to move. He straightens to his feet, the hand on Mingyu’s hip pushing at the hem of his shirt to expose Mingyu’s bare skin before Mingyu can register what he’s doing. 

“ _Don’t —_  ” Mingyu snaps, hand shooting out to snatch at Wonwoo’s wrist, the word a guttural bark from low in his throat. Panic and shame floods him, hot and clamorous, louder than the desire sparking wildfire in his gut. 

It’s not soon enough to stop Wonwoo from catching a damning glimpse of his skin. The battle-torn map of scars and lacerated flesh, half-healed and latticed across each other in years and years of untold history. It’s horrifying, and sickening, something repulsive and ugly, and the last thing Mingyu wants someone he’d been meaning to fuck, someone he’d been hoping would make him feel momentarily ordinary, to see.

Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, but he retracts his hand, shaking it loose from Mingyu’s vicelike grip.

“I won’t.” He says, strangely gentle. He presses a soft kiss against Mingyu’s lips, coaxing him back from his caution, the vicious defensiveness in the face of a threat. When he feels Mingyu relax against him, kissing back and deepening the kiss, Wonwoo turns it quickly filthy again, thrusting his tongue between Mingyu’s lips and letting his hand curl around Mingyu’s still leaking cock again.

“What do you want me to do, Mingyu?” Wonwoo breathes against Mingyu’s mouth, nipping meaningfully at his lip.

Mingyu answers with a soft groan. Wonwoo’s hand stills on him, and if anything, he feels himself harden even more in an almost Pavlovian response. “Touch me. _Please_.”

“Is that all?” Wonwoo cocks his head, locking his eyes on Mingyu as if to savour the pleasure of watching him squirm.

“And your — your mouth.” Mingyu whimpers. “I want your mouth on me.”

Wonwoo rewards this with a kiss against his jaw, and then his neck, the lowest point of his chest he can reach through the v of his collar. He lowers himself to his knees, takes Mingyu in his hand with a slow, teasing stroke. He grazes a kiss against the underside of Mingyu’s cock just to watch him press his head back against the wall in defeat, his cock twitching against Wonwoo’s palm.

The smile curved across Wonwoo’s lips is downright _cruel_ , but _fuck_ , if this is the price Mingyu has to pay for the hottest person he’s ever seen in his life sucking him off, he’ll take it.

Mingyu chokes on his next inhale, fingers scrambling to curl in white-knuckled fists through Wonwoo’s hair as Wonwoo swallows him whole without stopping.

It’s hot, wet, and obscene, the feeling of Wonwoo’s mouth around him like liquid heat, his tongue dragging against the underside of his cock, outlining every vein like he means to map him out as conquered territory. Wonwoo groans around him, the vibrations rippling around the entirety of his cock, and Mingyu can feel himself slowly, surely, losing his grip on reality.

Wonwoo draws back, sucking hard even as he strokes lightly at the base of his cock, the circle of his hand tightening into a fist as he bobs his head to take Mingyu deeper. The concept of oxygen, or choking, never seems to occur to Wonwoo, his throat working warm and tight around Mingyu, swallowing each time he brings his mouth down to the base of Mingyu’s cock. 

Mingyu gasps, hips jerking forwards when he feels Wonwoo’s hand gravitating lower to cup at his balls, stroking lightly at them with his fingertips.

“Wonwoo, I’m — _fuck_ , I’m going to come if you keep doing that.”

Wonwoo groans, the vibrations rippling around Mingyu’s cock, and he strokes the pads of his fingers against the skin behind Mingyu’s balls, dangerously close to his hole. His cock brushes against the back of Wonwoo’s throat and the noise that slips from Mingyu’s mouth is so far gone, so ruined and raw that it’s almost _inhuman_.

With his other hand pumping around his cock, working him with his fingers, and his mouth sealed around his cock, sucking as he bobs his head, Wonwoo alternates between smooth and slow, drawing out each touch and application of pressure to drive Mingyu crazy, and a fast, ruthless rhythm that has Mingyu feeling like he’s actively trying to suck his soul out through his cock.

Mingyu unravels fast into a wrecked, gasping mess, every other breath a gasp or a lingering groan teetering on the edge of abandon. Every time he feels like he’s about to come, Wonwoo tugs him back, physically removing his mouth, or loosening the pressure of his lips in an endless cycle of edging seemingly designed as his personal form of torture.

When Wonwoo pulls back to suckle and lap at the tip of Mingyu’s cock, he makes a show of looking up into Mingyu’s eyes, and Mingyu nearly comes right then and there.

“Wonwoo — ” Mingyu cries, hips stuttering forwards desperately. “ _Please._ Fuck. Just — ”

“What is it, Mingyu?” Wonwoo says, his voice wrecked and husky and _god_ , Mingyu could come just from fucking hearing the way his name sounds on his lips like this, if Wonwoo would just would _let him_. 

“I need — _I need to come._ ”

Wonwoo flicks his tongue out to lick at the wetness leaking from Mingyu’s tip, and for a moment Mingyu thinks he’s going to ignore his plea.

“ _Beg_ , Mingyu.”

“Wh – _fuck_.” Mingyu cuts himself off with a ragged moan, doubling over as Wonwoo leans in to suck at the soft skin of his inner thigh. He laves his tongue across the juncture of his crotch as if to mark out the perfect place for his teeth, and then bites down. Despite anticipating it, Mingyu isn’t ready. He’s never going to be fucking ready for the sensation of Wonwoo’s teeth sinking into his skin, the sweet pressure descending into pain, sharp and piercing and _so fucking good_.

He can feel the blood welling against the outlines of Wonwoo’s teeth, warm and wet, dripping from the bite when Wonwoo breaks away to watch the rivulets trail down his thigh.

“ _Please._ ” Mingyu sobs wretchedly, without prompting this time. “ _Please_ , Wonwoo. Please fucking let me come.” 

Wonwoo, his canines curving into the seam of his lips, swollen and smeared with Mingyu’s blood, smiles.

“See.” he murmurs. “All you had to do was _ask_.”

And he takes Mingyu into his mouth, swallowing until Mingyu’s cock hits the very back of his throat and slides even deeper still. His tongue curls around the sides of Mingyu, his throat working around Mingyu as he bobs up and down, sucking at Mingyu like he can taste the blood through his veins. Wonwoo’s hand shifts to Mingyu thigh, fingers pressing against the outline of the bright-red mark in his skin, and it’s this, combined with the endless heat and pressure of Wonwoo’s mouth, that sends Mingyu tumbling over the edge of oblivion. He comes so hard that everything goes fuzzy and dark around the edges for a few breathless seconds, and then the euphoria hits like pure adrenaline. 

Wonwoo does choke then, swallowing around him but unable to let a few drops spill from the edges of his mouth as he pulls back, the rise and fall of his chest unsteady. 

Mingyu waits for his pulse to settle, counts the beats between each thumping, pounding sound in his ribcage. Wonwoo licks at the come that’s escaped his mouth, his pink tongue flicking out across his lips and _fuck_ , Mingyu thinks, he was made for this. 

When he can feel his chest without struggling to breathe, he tugs Wonwoo to his feet. He slams him back against the wall, crushing their mouths together, heedless of the traces of his own come and his own blood on Wonwoo’s tongue, chasing the taste of Wonwoo, _Wonwoo_ , Wonwoo underneath it all.

He has his hand finally beneath the tight fabric of Wonwoo’s pants, shoving beneath his underwear to get at his straining cock when a scream rips through the alley. And then the scent of blood spills through the air.

Mingyu’s head whips to the doorway to Purgatory, yanking his hands and his mouth from Wonwoo as if he’s been burned.  

“Do you smell that?”

Blood, and steel, the slick smell of leather and Kevlar. The smell of Sentinels. 

Mingyu turns back to Wonwoo, eyes wide and suddenly wild. There’s no time to explain, no time to corroborate an alibi or an excuse, or even an explanation. His face sets into grim determination as he buttons his pants back up, brushing out his shirt and running an errant hand through his hair. He must seem undoubtedly as wrecked and fucked out as he feels, but at the very least, he’s not about to meet his death looking like he’s literally just had dirty, filthy back alley sex with a man he met all of an hour ago. 

He steps in through the portal leading back to Purgatory without a backwards glance, his heartbeat rising to his throat again at the thought of Sentinels hunting him all the way to Purgatory. Unless… unless they’d been tipped off. Which, come to think of it, is probably the only reason they’ve found him.

Purgatory, as it turns out, isn’t so different from everywhere else in the world. Here of all places, where they trade in secrets and depravity, there’s nothing that can’t be betrayed for the right amount of blood money.

Out on the dancefloor, a ring of Sentinels stand in formation around a body, bright pink curls hair soaking red with the blood pooling around it. Mingyu’s chest tightens as he thinks back to the pretty light fae at the bar. A careless, insignificant touch of his shoulder was all it took to seal her fate.   

A circle of the crown’s soldiers around a fallen body is nothing unusual in the citadel, particularly if that body belongs to one of the underworld. Innocence is inconsequential if your blood is filth and your very existence has been outlawed as a sin.  

Mingyu steps out from the crowd, crossing into the no man’s land between the Sentinels and the rest of Purgatory’s patrons.

“Should I be flattered that the crown saw fit to send twice as many guards after me this time around?”

False bravado and a reckless disregard for his own life sits well on him. He’d almost _relish_ the coming fight if it didn’t mean going on the run again. Finding another way to temporarily disappear only to be tracked and hunted to the ends of the earth is no way to live, let alone survive, in a city like this. 

“Come quietly, and we won’t have any problems.” The Sentinel standing in the centre, right in front of the body, stares him down like he’s nothing more than a smear of mud on his shoe. “You know your place, _mutt_.”

“I do. And it’s anywhere but rotting in the dungeons of that fucking castle.” Mingyu smiles, bright with false warmth, and spreads his hand wide. “You want me? You’ll have to kill me.”

“Consider this: surrender yourself to the King’s authority and you’ll face a lighter sentence when you’re back home where you belong.” 

Mingyu’s hackles rise at that, his grin splintering as its replaced by disgust, disbelief. 

“A _lighter sentence_? You mean lighter than being tortured and experimented on like an animal for my entire life? Thanks, but go fuck yourself.”

“Remember, we gave you the chance to choose mercy.” The Sentinel smirks, their face twisting into a mocking, sneering thing. “There will be no next time.”

This one, Mingyu decides, this one he’ll kill first. He lets out a laugh, low and guttural, his smile full of teeth. 

“Remember this: you never stood a fucking chance.”

The fact of the matter is this: it’s true what they used to say about werewolves. Everything they used to say, from how bloodthirsty and uncontrollable they are, to how savage and ruthless and _violent_ they are, because their nature demands it, because they don’t know any other way to be. Every bit of the myth and faded, forgotten legend is true.

Mingyu is exceptionally good at killing people. He was born for it, after all. Bred for it like a rabid dog, fed and nurtured and disciplined all these years in service of raising him as the perfect instrument for murder to be pointed in the direction of fresh blood and set loose.

When he tears into the first soldier on his left, the hunger driving him forwards is no longer solely him but every instinct in him that screams for blood and retribution, that lies impatiently in wait to be unleashed at the first taste of violence.

Mingyu rips through limbs like they’re nothing more than poorly-stitched parts of a rag doll. His sheer strength and speed no match for the Sentinels, who, despite their training and predisposition towards casual brutality, have never had to fight a monster like Mingyu. The spray of blood from the throat of the first Sentinel splatters across his chest, half his face, and down the side of his arm. Mingyu suppresses a shudder — the smell is suffocating, _irresistible_ — tries not to let the hunger eating away at his control sway him.

He darts out of the way as a Sentinel comes swinging, hard, for his head, lunging for the right side they’ve left vulnerable to attack, teeth sinking into the bared flesh of an open throat. The next goes down just as easy, their stomach splitting open from the force of his claws tearing through the flimsy armor and spilling viscera across the Purgatory’s dancefloor.  

A Sentinel armed with silver and steel, the blades of their knives no doubt coated in wolfsbane judging by the violet-black sheen of the metal, surges forwards. Mingyu has always wondered how much the scientists locked in the kingdom’s dungeons with him shared with their higher-ups, the military, and the King and hiss Royal Council. It’s clearly not enough if they think wolfsbane is a viable option.  

They used to introduce incremental amounts of wolfsbane into his system, force-fed or intravenous. He wouldn’t be allowed to eat until he stopped screaming from how it burned, how he could feel it burning away at his insides. 

Mingyu was never taught grace, or mercy. It was silver or lead, poison or punishment. Killing Sentinels is so much like bloodsport to him, so much like the chew toys they used to give him to play with before he tore them to pieces.

He lunges at two of the Sentinels, tackling one to the ground and gutting him with a swipe of a hand. The other rounds on him, drawing blood as he swings his sword down across his shoulder. Mingyu bares his teeth, a bloody grin painting across his face as he watches the shock, and then the dread bloom like nightshade on their face. The wolfsbane is nothing but a sting, mildly inconvenient but the farthest possible thing from deadly.

Mingyu swings a closed fist at the Sentinel, seizing the wrist holding onto the sword with his other hand and forcing the soldier to choose between dropping it and losing an arm. The sword clatters to the ground with the sound of ringing steel, and the Sentinel loses his arm anyway.

“You filthy little half-breed bastard.” The leader of this unit, Mingyu presumes, snarls, and it’s the same man who’d spoken before. The one Mingyu wants to relish killing, slowly, _painfully_.

“We’re going to ruin you. You’ll barely be alive by the time we drag you back to the dungeons, and what they’ll do to you after _that_  — ” The Sentinel cocks his head and laughs, a nasty, vulgar sound.

Instead of attacking, however, he steps to the crowd, yanking the arm of the nearest person and dragging them to the centre of the room, amidst all the slaughtered Sentinels. Mingyu had lost count halfway through, but there are eight in various states of ruin, limbs strewn and blood splattered across every surface within a fifteen-foot radius. It looks like the floor of a slaughterhouse, or a butcher.

It’s familiar in a way that never ceases to make Mingyu sick to his stomach. Later, when he was older, no longer a child to be tiptoed around with the semblance of humanity and propriety, they used to leave him in his cage, drenched in filth like this after the tests, and then the games. The games were always the worst.

They left him, blood and viscera coating his skin, matted through his hair, pieces of flesh and entrails still clinging to his clothes, as if to serve as a reminder. As if to say, _this is what you deserve._ This is all you will ever be. And perhaps they were right.

Perhaps Mingyu is exactly the monster they wanted him to be.

But he isn’t about to stand by and watch them turn innocent people into victims of his collateral damage. He wavers, rage and indecision warring on his face as he watches the blade hovering near the throat of the poor boy inch closer towards his skin.

“Don’t —  _leave them the fuck alone_.” He spits, fury lighting up his eyes with a flicker of yellow-gold. “I’m the one you came for. I’m the one you want.”

The Captain merely smirks, the flick of his wrist sending the sword slicing neatly through the boy’s throat in a bloody smile. His body slides to the floor with a thump, and a guttural snarl wrenches from Mingyu’s lips, building from deep within his chest, and deeper still, from the cage inside his bones, the echo chamber of his skin holding back his true nature.

The Sentinel moves for the crowd, and Mingyu may be faster but the Captain is seemingly no longer concerned with the safety and wellbeing of the realm and the King’s people. He seizes the first person he sees, sword swinging high as Mingyu lunges for him.

Mingyu can taste his rage blurring with hunger on his tongue, the need to kill, to _dismember_ , to tear this man apart. The last thing he expects is for a voice to cut through the haze of blood lust and fury to drench him in ice-cold shock.

“Gentlemen. What have we here?”

It’s Wonwoo. Wonwoo with his teeth bared in a predatory smile, eyes cold and deadened. A bloodsucker's smile.

And Mingyu doesn’t know whether to call the sudden, sharp tightness in his throat surprise, or weakness, or indignity at the sight of him, but he feels his bones rooting motionless in place.

“Even Purgatory isn’t a land without laws. I’m sure you’re aware what crossing over that threshold means.”

Time seems to slow, warp, spilling over its fixed place in the linear continuum of space. It takes less than the flicker of a heartbeat, a shudder of an inhale — twin flashes of quicksilver appearing in Wonwoo’s hands. The flick of his slender wrists sends them flying, spinning through air and flesh and bone. They land with soundless precision against the opposite wall behind the Captain and the remaining three Sentinels with a spray of violent crimson marking their trajectories like expressionist art. 

There’s not a drop of blood on Wonwoo. He straightens nonetheless, dusting off his lapel and the seams of his jacket with the back of his hand. 

Mingyu watches the severed heads of the Sentinels slide from their shoulders, severed right through the spine, his jaw hanging weightlessly open. 

Wonwoo lifts his gaze, eyes narrowed with surgical scrutiny, as if to weigh the worth of Mingyu’s life and death against the balance of personal cost to him. Mingyu doesn’t dare breathe, let alone move; the smell of fresh blood, human blood, wafts through the air like provocation. Live bait. 

Whatever Wonwoo decides, the knife-flick of his smile summons an all-too-familiar heat, low and knowing, curling through Mingyu’s stomach.

“I thought I tasted _wolf_.” 

Wonwoo takes a lithe step towards him, head tilting at an angle as he drinks Mingyu in, black gaze burning with undisguised hunger.

“A pity.”

The low murmur of his voice reverberates right down the centre of Mingyu’s back. He can’t tear his eyes from him, not even to look away from the sight of Wonwoo’s tongue grazing his bottom lip.  And then all he can feel is a sharp, sudden pressure at the back of his neck. An abrupt nothingness. 

Lowering himself to the ground near Mingyu, Wonwoo stops momentarily, lingering to study the way sleep — or at least the appearance of it — softens Mingyu’s features, his strong jawline and high cheekbones, to make him seem younger. Almost boyish. Slender, white fingers card lightly through the hair framing Mingyu’s closed eyes.

“Such a handsome face,” he muses, the pad of his thumb brushes across Mingyu’s lips, still swollen, slightly bruised, the bare red of an already faded scar. “For such a violent, monstrous thing.”

And it is a tragedy, truly, the way misfortune writes itself into the fates of the most seemingly harmless creatures. But then, if the life and death in the citadel’s demimonde could teach you anything, it’s that beautiful things are always the most dangerous.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> THE VAMPIRE!WONWOO X WEREWOLF!MINGYU AU WE DESERVE. also i know this isn't the afilaw update y'all were probably waiting for but this au literally refused to leave me the fuck alone until i wrote it so. here we are.
> 
> [twitter.](http://twitter.com/bisexualgyu) / [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/gyuwu).


End file.
